Forgotten Coast

Family Stories and Colonial Pasts

You approach family stories with caution and care, especially when a thing long forgotten is uncovered in the telling.

In this deft memoir, Richard Shaw unpacks a generations-old family story he was never told: that his ancestors once farmed land in Taranaki which had been confiscated from its owners and sold to his great-grandfather, who had been with the Armed Constabulary when it invaded Parihaka on 5 November 1881.

Honest, and intertwined with an examination of Shaw's relationship with his father and of his family's Catholicism, this book's key focus is urgent: how, in a decolonising world, Pakeha New Zealanders wrestle with, and own, the privilege of their colonial pasts.